


Watch it Burn

by daftalchemist



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Angst, Drabble, Eldritch Abomination Cecil, Episode 47 spoilers, god!Cecil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-16
Updated: 2014-05-16
Packaged: 2018-01-24 23:48:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1621406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daftalchemist/pseuds/daftalchemist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your god is old and knowledgeable. Your god has seen your town's creation, and will witness its destruction.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Watch it Burn

“The funny thing about a town is that you can spend centuries waiting for it, and it can still disappoint you,” he said, taking a long drag off of a short stump of a cigarette. Something he’d found bent and dirtied in the backseat of the car and had decided it was now or never, so smoke them if you’ve got them. He got them, so he leaned against the car and lazily puffed on the disgusting thing, enjoying his new habit.

“You spend your whole life--or the closest thing you have that resembles a life--building a town up, teaching it how to live, and in the end nobody even appreciates that they have it. It’s a fixed point; a certainty that will always exist, right?” He turned slightly, glancing over his shoulder at the man in the backseat, but the man was lost in a deep sleep that he wouldn’t likely wake up from soon. The man was a great listener.

“You know them, and they know you. They worship you almost like a god, and they never realize that you are one.” He turned again towards the car, towards the sleeping man. “Did you even realize I was one?”

The man sleeping in the backseat of the car said nothing, but it wasn’t a question that needed answering. Of course he had known. When the unblemished skin pulled apart and the void seeped through, when it had coalesced into thick cords that bound the sleeping man tight and held him close, when the cords had sought out the heat of his flesh and penetrated deeply, when the man’s cries had been as heavy with pleasure as his body was, then the man had known. The man had known this was no simple human he’d found to hold and to love, and the sleeping man had been fine with it, and still was.

He reached in through the open car window and brushed long fingers against a stubbled cheek. It wasn’t as warm as it should be, but it wasn’t as cold as it could be either, and that was enough.

“Carlos,” he murmured, managing to smile for a moment before the chaos rolled back in like wave breaking on the edges of his mind.

The car sat on a lonely stretch of road far beyond the madness spread out before them; the screaming and the burning, the dying. The car didn’t work. The car had never worked, but that had never stopped it before. It didn’t matter. There was nowhere to go and nowhere to be. Just the burning tip of a bent cigarette lost against the flames licking at the buildings below them. This was what they had wanted, wasn’t it? The revolution, only not as they had expected it.

“The funny thing about words is that anyone can use their meanings, and it’ll always mean the same thing.” Another drag, another breath of poisonous air, another cloud of smoke in the night. “I guess Strex figured out the meaning of ‘revolution’ too.”

The hand desperately gripping his wrist demanded his attention, and he turned to see a terrified man no longer sleeping in the backseat of the car. He leaned in the window, shushing him softly as he stroked Carlos’ cheek with the hand that still held the bent cigarette.

“Carlos, it’s fine. Everything’s fine now,” he said, smiling warmly. “I’ll take care of everything. No doors, no walls, no houses, no town.”

“But the…,” Carlos man began, but didn’t finish, his voice raw, thick with gravel and smoke.

“No fences either, love, I promise. Everything like it was before,” he continued. “Can you go back to sleep?”

Carlos nodded, his terror already abating, his weariness already reclaiming him. It was no small task walking through the space sandwiched between reality and what you thought was real, after all. Carlos was incredibly brave for managing it.

“I’m sorry, babe,” he cooed, kissing the soon-to-be sleeping man’s forehead. “I just wanted to watch it burn. Just a little.”

He stood and put the cigarette to his lips, grinning crookedly around the smoldering bit of paper and tobacco and tar.

“Sometimes you just want to watch it burn. Sometimes you just want to see their faces as they realize their mistakes.”

He flicked the smoking cigarette butt towards the pandemonium.

“Sometimes you want to make them know they should have _listened_ to their god.”

 


End file.
